The Posthumanism to Come

Abstract

This essay aims to identify several related themes that regularly appear in posthumanist scholarship but which have not been theorized sufficiently, including the rhetoric of temporal and historical rupture, the logic of dialectical reversal, the effacement of human/animal difference, and above all the critical ascendancy of the term “posthumanism” itself. If one of the aims of posthumanism is to render the face of the human unknowable to itself, then to what extent does the human that re-names itself “posthuman” do so in order to lay claim once again to a dubious self-knowledge? The rhetoric of posthumanism, moreover, implies a progressive narrative that ironically mirrors the Enlightenment principles of perfectibility that it would oppose. Drawing from Derrida’s notion of the “democracy to come,” I argue that the advent of the posthuman must always remain deferred. Just as the promise of democracy remains unfulfilled, the posthuman must infinitely postdate its arrival in any present.

Keywords:

• animality
• Derrida
• disavowal
• Freud
• posthumanism
• violence

Notes

1. Jon D. Miller et al., “Public Acceptance of Evolution,” Science 313 (11 Aug. 2006): 765–66. The rejection of evolution frequently hinges on a disavowal of human animality. Consider the recent emergence of “Intelligent Design” in the United States as an alternative both to Darwinian evolution and to Creationism. Intelligent Design allows for modifications to occur polygenetically, but it safeguards the borders of the human by continuing to deny natural selection.

2. Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (London: Continuum, 2004) 22.

3. When Species Meet (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008) 19.

4. Jacques Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham UP, 2008) 136. Henceforth cited in the text as AIA.

5. Peggy Kamuf, The Division of Literature, or the University in Deconstruction (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997) 27.

6. Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004) 25, 26.

7. Giovanna Borradori, ed., Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003) 120. Henceforth cited in the text as PTT.

8. Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008) 171.

9. Carrie Rohman, Stalking the Subject: Modernism and the Animal (New York: Columbia UP, 2009) 29.

10. Sigmund Freud, “Fetishism” in The Standard Edition, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1975).

11. Peggy Kamuf, Book of Addresses (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005) 14.

12. Sigmund Freud, “An Outline of Psychoanalysis” in The Standard Edition, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1973) 61.

13. Sigmund Freud, “The Taboo of Virginity” in The Standard Edition, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1973) 199.

14. Sigmund Freud, “Civilization and its Discontents” in Sigmund Freud. Vol. 12: Civilization, Society, and Religion, trans. James Strachey (New York: Penguin, 1991) 305.

15. Stefan Lovgren, “Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds,” National Geographic, available <http://news.nationalgeo graphic.com/news/2005/08/0831050831chimpgenes.html> (accessed 8 Feb. 2010).

16. The preoccupation with animal lack is thus not unlike the trauma produced by the male fetishist's perception of female castration. The fetishist disavows both male/female sameness (their similarity to one another beyond genital dissimilarity) and male/female difference: the latter insofar as the fetish functions to replace the “missing” maternal phallus.

17. Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman, eds., Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (New York: Columbia UP, 2005) 3.

18. Jonathan Burt, “Review of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, ed. Cary Wolfe, and Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of the Species, and Posthumanist Theory,” Society and Animals 13.2 (2005) 168.

19. For provocative discussions of various animal capacities, see the “Reflections” by Marjorie Garber, Wendy Doniger, Peter Singer, and Barbara Smuts included in J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1999) 73–106; see also Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, eds., The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond Humanity (New York: St. Martin's, 1993).

20. Martin Heidegger, “The Thing” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper, 1971) 178.

21. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger Masters and Judith Masters (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1964) 116.

22. Sigmund Freud, “Our Attitude toward Death,” The Standard Edition, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth, 1957) 289.

23. Zygmunt Bauman, Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies (Cambridge: Polity, 1992) 17; original emphasis.

24. Agamben, The Open 16.

25. Jacques Derrida, Ulysses Gramophone: Two Words for Joyce, trans. Tina Kendall and Shari Benstock, in Peggy Kamuf, ed., A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (New York: Columbia UP, 1991) 576. Henceforth cited in the text as UG. For more on the role of the “yes” in deconstructive thought, see my “Derrida's Ouija Board,” Qui Parle 17.2 (2009): 85–101.

26. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (New York: Routledge, 2001) 400 n. 21.

27. Samir Haddad suggests that Derrida ceased referring to “the lesser violence” after “Violence and Metaphysics” because the phrase implies a normative decision-making procedure that deconstruction requires us to forfeit. If we can never know with any absolute certainty whether a given act constitutes the lesser or the greater violence, then it makes no sense to employ these terms. This perpetual ignorance, however, does not require the suspension of all normative judgments. In “The Force of Law,” for instance, Derrida argues that the “ordeal of the undecidable … must be gone through by any decision worthy of the name.” See “The Force of Law: ‘The Mystical Foundation of Authority’” in Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, eds. Drucilla Cornell and Michel Rosenfeld (New York: Routledge, 1992) 24. To claim that we cannot make a decision with a view toward a lesser violence (even if it turns out that our decision has resulted in worse violence) is a bit like proposing that, since the signified of any signifier remains undecidable, then we ought not to ascribe any meaning to written or spoken language, no matter how provisional. In other words, Haddad seems to confuse the Derridean notion of undecidability with an unnecessarily paralyzing indecisiveness. See Samir Haddad, “A Genealogy of Violence, from Light to the Autoimmune,” Diacritics 38.1–2 (2008): 121–42.

28. See Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1876) 311.

29. Leonard Lawlor, This is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida (New York: Columbia UP, 2007) 109.

30. Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2005) 53, 36.

31. Gary Francione, for instance, draws the line “at sentience because … sentient beings have interests and the possession of interests is the necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the human community.” See Gary Francione, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2000) 175. See also James Rachels, “Drawing Lines” in Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, eds. Cass R. Sunstein and Martha Craven Nussbaum (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005) 162–74.

32. See Jacques Derrida, “Eating Well, or the Calculation of the Subject” in Points … Interviews, 1974–1994, ed. Elizabeth Weber, trans. Peggy Kamuf et al. (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) 282. Derrida does not explicitly link the “lesser violence” to “eating well.” Yet both phrases emerge in the context of discussions on ethics and violence. Derrida observes that the latter phrase implies a “respect for the other at the very moment when … one must begin to identify with the other, who is to be assimilated, interiorized, understood ideally” (283). “Eating well” thus invokes the same play of difference and sameness at work in “the lesser violence,” which in turn negotiates an irresolvable conflict between the desire to appropriate alterity and the other's resistance to such assimilation.

33. Matthew Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia UP, 2008) 144.

34. In another passage, Calarco argues more forcefully that “the human–animal distinction should be abolished or, at the very least, be treated with considerable caution and suspicion” (143). With regard to the latter point, who could seriously contend that Derrida has not treated the human–animal distinction with substantial vigilance and wariness? Calarco's own analysis admits as much when he observes that, “from the very earliest to the latest texts, Derrida is keenly aware of and intent on problematizing the anthropocentric underpinnings and orientation of philosophy and associated discourses” (104).

35. Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of the Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003) 1. Henceforth cited in the text as AR.

36. Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010) xvi. Henceforth cited in the text as WIP.

37. The complete list of theorists is as follows: (1) “Humanist Humanism” (Habermas, Rawls, Ferry, Heidegger); (2) “Humanist Posthumanism” (Nussbaum, Singer, Regan); (3) “Posthumanist Humanism” (Rorty, Žižek, Foucault); (4) “Posthumanist Posthumanism” (Derrida, Haraway, Latour, Luhmann, Maturana, and Varela).

38. Despite the misgivings that I outline below with regard to the institutionalization of the posthumanities, in no way do these remarks reflect my assessment of the many admirable authors and books published within the “Posthumanities” series, some of which directly challenge the language of posthumanism. As I have noted above, Haraway's insistence in When Species Meet that she is “not a posthumanist” seeks to unknow the human in a manner similar to what I propose in the final section of this essay. Perhaps as a concession to the series in which her book appears, however, Haraway describes the term posthumanities as a “useful notion for tracking scholarly conversations” (308).

39. Cary Wolfe, “Posthumanities” (2006), available <http://www.carywolfe.com/postabout.html> (accessed 2 Dec. 2010).

40. Jacques Derrida, The Beast and Sovereign, Vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009) 158, 157.

41. Jacques Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend,” trans. David Wood and Andrew Benjamin, in A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia UP, 1991) 275.